You may wonder how you can have your new windows that you just installed up and running. You might know what you need, but you may not recall it all at once so here’s a checklist of most stuff most people install on their new windows installation.
1-First off let’s begin with drivers:
My suggestion is to install the sound and then the video driver first and then the rest.
You can probably find the proper drivers on products CD or manufacturer’s website.
In case you couldn’t here are 2 very useful places that offer thousands of drivers for free.
http://www.driverzone.com/
http://www.driverguide.com/
2-Updates:
To download updates visit: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and/or enable automatic updates.
3-Modify Services:
well you can modify the services so the ones you do not actually need will not run and you will save some processing power and make your pc run way faster by just stop services that you do not use at all. To do this: Go to Start > Run > Type “msconfig” without the quotes. There you can change the contents of the Services and Startup tabs. While in Services, check “Hide All Microsoft Services” to make sure you’re not disabling the wrong service. But there are some services that are made by Microsoft and are often not needed by the usual user. For example, if you don’t ever use a Printer, you can disable the “Print Spooler” service. Remember, don’t change a setting that you don’t know whether it’s going to turn something useful or not. It’s better to leave those options as they are in those circumstances!
4-Browsers: we recommend installing at least firefox and internet explorer together. As there are websites that are supported better on one of them and also to have a good backup browser no matter what browser you use.
Firefox
http://www.firefox.com/
IE
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
5-Anti-Virus:
One of most confusing parts of setting up a new windows is the anti-virus, people try to use untrusted pirated versions and sometimes end-up having to install the windows all over again just because they don’t want to spend a buck on this department, so our recommendation for a free but legit anti-virus would be this one, we are using it for all our clients and so far no complaints.
it comes in different languages.
AVG Free
http://www.avg.com/
6-WinRAR: you will need this one to un-zip zipped files or make them as these days many of downloads tend to come in that format.
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
7-Browser Add-Ons: Little tiny but important stuff that makes your web surfing experience more colorful.
Flash: the most common ad-on on all browsers that helps you play games or watch animations on webpages
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?locale=
Shockwave: a plug-in for gamers. Well, mostly.
http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/
Adobe Acrobat Reader: Nowadays most of ebooks, receipts, forms and all sorts of documents tend to come in the PDF format and you will need acrobat reader to open them.
http://get.adobe.com/reader/
Java:
another plug-in that lets you open applets including 3D games on your web browser.
http://www.java.com/en/
Silverlight:
microsoft’s competitor for adobe flash with its use getting wider you will need it sooner or later.
http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/
8-Codecs: We always feel bad when we can’t open videos on our new windows while the old one could open all of them and we run around trying to install new programs just to open them well sometimes those programs come to no use, in most cases though installing codecs is the solution as windows media player will be able to use them to open those files here are a list codec packs that can take care of most video files.
Community Codec Pack: This one covers most of codecs that are around.
http://www.cccp-project.net/
DivX: The famous video format although cummunity codec contains an old version of this codec you will need to install this again in order to be able to open all divx videos.
http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus/codec-pack
QuickTime Lite: Quick Time is very common but sometimes not common enough to have it all installed, this lite version makes you be able to open .mov files without installing the
full version.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QT_Lite.htm
9- IM: if you use any of following servies you can download the latest version from the links
MSN
http://windowslive.com/desktop/messenger
AOL:
http://products.aim.com/
Yahoo:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
Skype:
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/windows/
Google talk:
http://www.google.com/talk/